In this episode of 'Poem of the Week' David McCooey reads 'Fleeting: Sylvia Plath at 80'. ABR Editor, Peter Rose, introduces David who then reads and discusses his poem.

Fleeting

Sylvia Plath at 80.

I have outstayed the old millennium,
lost count of years, and jobs, and meals prepared.
My children have careers; the students of my students teach.
     I have had some fame, though
     a little is enough, I know.

In an earlier age, my youthful world conspired
to render me with fires of grief,
at which I bent, and murmured my beginner's German.
And then came, as if I'd called them up,
     the mess of childbirth,
     the bedlam of men and women.

I wrote those poems – the ones for which I'm known –
in the coldest winter for two hundred years.
The snow stretched telephone wires to the ground.

The children and I hid from the historic cold
as if hiding from a fairy-tale monster.
The monster froze the river, ground, and air,
while I outstared, through all those monochrome days,
     the gaze of that greater madness
     I'd called my calling.

Then my discovery: the deranging noise –
like bees or the airy sea – that filled my stony head
was merely fleeting, like snow, or flowers, or husbands' lies
     on crackling telephone lines.
Or the brief duration of abysmal sleep.

David McCooey

David McCooey is a prize-winning poet, critic, and editor. His latest book of poems, Star Struck, will be published by UWA Publishing in October. His debut poetry collection, Blister Pack (2005) won the Mary Gilmore Award and was shortlisted for four other major national literary awards. His second full-length collection, Outside (2011), was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards and was a finalist for the 2012 Melbourne Prize for Literature's 'Best Writing Award'. His work has appeared for nine out of the last ten years in Black Inc's annual anthology, The Best Australian Poems. McCooey is the deputy general editor of the prize-winning Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (2009), published internationally as The Literature of Australia (2009), and he is the author of a critical study on Australian autobiography, Artful Histories, (1996/2009), which won a NSW Premier's Literary Award. His poems, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous books, journals, and newspapers. McCooey is also a musician and sound artist. His album of 'poetry soundtracks', Outside Broadcast, was released in 2013 as a digital download and is available for streaming on Spotify and elsewhere. He is a professor of writing and literature at Deakin University in Geelong, where he lives.

In this episode of 'Poem of the Week' Campbell Thomson reads 'Lament for "Cape" Kennedy'. ABR Editor, Peter Rose, introduces Campbell who then reads and discusses his poem.

Campbell Thomson is a Melbourne writer and barrister, whose poems have been published in Overland, Cordite, and Rabbit. He practises criminal, native title, and environmental law. He is a judicial officer for the Australian Rugby Union and a rugby tragic. He was an officer in The Black Watch in Germany and Northern Ireland. He used to talk about films on ABC local radio, and produces and acts, most recently with Othello at 45downstairs.

In this episode of 'Poem of the Week' Andrew Sant reads 'Tamarillos'. ABR Editor, Peter Rose, introduces Andrew who then reads and discusses his poem.

Tamarillos

Vertigo is nowhere
where they are, and time,
too, seems suspended.
Ovoid, working on ripeness
dozens make no demands
on the branches, light,
they might be, as blown eggs,
easily out of reach among
the sunlit leaves. Tamarillos,
tree tomatoes, tomates de ârbol
or whatever name holds them aloft
in a nation's esteem, these
exotics, close to the window,
are merely mute absorbers
of birdcalls and banter,
no-one's gift to cuisine;
a slow over-the-summer
accumulation, providing
silence with a shape
like a form of percussion
never to be struck.
In their plenty, they are polished
and smooth experts
at deferment, unusually
snobbish. Elsewhere, in rows,
they're a crop. The
compelling force, it's
beneath them to address,
they hourly thwart; another lofty
thing that makes the fruit look
so perpetually good –
who'd wish to pick any? –
until the first one drops.

Andrew Sant

Andrew Sant was born in London, and came to Australia with his parents in 1962. He has worked in a variety of occupations, including teaching and copywriting. After relocating to Hobart in the late 1970s, Sant founded the literary magazine Island with Michael Denholm in 1979, the pair remaining as co-editors until 1990. In 1989 he was made a member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council. More recently he has lived in Melbourne, but has also spent considerable time in writer-in-residence positions overseas: he was writer-in-residence at the University of Peking, in Beijing, China, in 2001; Writing Fellow at Leicester University in the UK between 2002 and 2005, and in 2007–2008, Writing Fellow at the University of Chichester, in West Sussex, UK.

His first collection of poems, Lives, was published by Angus and Robertson in 1980. His most recent collection is The Bicycle Thief and Other Poems (2013)".

In this episode of 'Poem of the Week' Ali Alizadeh reads 'I ♥ (this) Life?'. ABR Editor, Peter Rose, introduces Ali who then reads and discusses his poem.

I ♥ this life (?)

For every         $10                          I produce (in, say, 30 minutes)

                           $6                           goes to the boss. Join

the club? And then

I pay                 $4                             for some crap (say, lukewarm coffee, to keep me
awake)

                                                            that cost the boss

                                                                                                  of s/he who made it

                          $1             =                I'm worse off
              by       $10                              in 30 minutes. Such

is life? My boss's bosses
demand growth, so soon

the extracted
                          $6                                 must become, say
                          $10          =                  I'll have to produce
                          $14                               in 30 minutes

to keep my job/salary
by working longer/harder. Then

of course, the owner of the cruddy coffee shop
also ogles profit, so

the watery beige rubbish in the cup
(to which I'll be sadly addicted) will cost

                           $6.                         Nota Bene: it will still cost the café captain
of industry      $1                            to produce the commodity – the exchange-

value of my or the (undertrained) barista's labour power
hasn't grown
                          so that it won't impede
capital's expansion. I'll have

had                    $19                        sucked out of me. Par

for the course? Well, I forgot

to mention: since the price of coffee
will go up & my income                           won't

I'll also be                                                    broke. The question,

then      =        for how long

I              (and you, and she, and he, and you, and they, and we

and we) will go along
with this                        kind of                               life?
The day after tomorrow

infinite growth           =           I'll have to create at least

                        $18                     in 30 minutes
                                                    to abide by boss's projections. My back
will be sore. I'll be needing
the ghastly
thing (made with expired milk) that passes for beverage
                                                    even more. It'll be
                        $8 (at least)
– I'll be         $4                        out of pocket. Nota Bene: since the hapless barista
                                                    will have been replaced by a (rusting) machine
the coffee will have cost the caffeine crook
only                 $0.5
                        =
bosses will be
                        $20.5
richer
at my expense – I'll have accumulated
                         $4             in debt                 in 30 minutes
despite being employed. Monkey

see, monkey do? Well, no. I hope not. I hope one day                we
                                                                                                                (exhausted, aching, sick)

will find it
                       historically inevitable
to say:

                       No. Fuck off. No more.

Ali Alizadeh

Ali Alizadeh's latest collection of poetry, Ashes in the Air (UQP, 2011) was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award. His latest book is Transactions (UQP, 2013) and he lectures at Monash University.